


The Dark Side of Your Dreams

by bucketmouse



Series: Take My Hunger (Pynch Vampire AU) [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blood Drinking, Dream Sharing, Hand Jobs, I had to google so much about the history of drag racing in the USA my god, M/M, Minor Suicidal Thoughts, Oral Sex, Psychic Bond, Rimming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:17:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9013687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bucketmouse/pseuds/bucketmouse
Summary: It's been two weeks since Ronan changed Adam from a human into a vampire like him. More happened on that night than either were aware of, though, and it will only wait so long before demanding what was given. Not to mention the complicated world of vampire politics Adam has now found himself in the middle of.(Vampire AU, follows 'The Red Of Your Blood')





	1. Ronan

**Author's Note:**

> As always, great thanks to asael and notraelet for their encouragement! They are the MVPs of my heart.
> 
> I'm not sure how long this one is going to be as it's still in progress but I'll aim for an update a week, I wanted to give a holiday present to everyone who has been so kind and commented so far! This one starts out Ronan POV but I will be switching between him and Adam for this story. Chapters will be named with POV character.

When your life expectancy changed from eighty years (give or take a decade or two depending on hard living) to effectively eternity, age changed from a number to a series of fractions, of percentages. 

Twice your human life so you lived half and half in each world, that was childhood. Twice that,young adult. Twice that again, adulthood and later. A golden ratio instead of a lifeline. Average age for the change was in the mid to early twenties - it was considered ideal. Then you were a baby until you were forty. Not an adult in your new world until eighty, around when you would have been expecting to be planning your death. 

There was a reason for that. Gansey had told Ronan once that a quarter of all those changed to vampires didn’t live to see eighty. It was something about the way everything had changed by then. At eighty many of your loved ones from life had died or were dying. The world you knew it no longer existed. And yet you remained, timeless, ageless, a photograph frozen in place that would never descend into the decay that affected everyone else.

There was no shame in it. It was difficult to predict who would last and who wouldn’t. One in four, Gansey had told him. Count three of your friends if you all turned around the same time - one wouldn’t be at your centennial.

Try to guess who it would be. Turn it into a fun game, why don’t you?

At seventy-one, Ronan knew Gansey was worried he would be one of the unlucky one in four. Declan thought the same. Matthew - Matthew didn’t think about things like that, it wasn’t in his nature. It concerned Gansey most of all, though. With Niall gone, Gansey had assumed parental responsibilities for Ronan. At Ronan’s age it meant little aside from someone whom sensitive legal documents could be shared with without needing Ronan’s okay first. 

It also meant that if Ronan wanted to die, Gansey was legally bound to help him if he asked it of Gansey. 

It was something they never talked about, but they didn’t need a mental link for Ronan to know how it plagued Gansey’s thoughts. That every time Ronan came back from a long drive after going AWOL all weekend Gansey was mostly just happy Ronan was still alive. That he wasn’t out there spending all night dwelling on the fact that the scenery was no longer hot rods and car hops and rockabilly music. Or at least if he was, he wasn’t considering that he didn’t want to live in a world without all that. 

That was probably why - once his initial anger had subsided - Gansey was actually happy that Ronan had been the one to change Adam. Now Adam Parrish was the responsibility of Ronan Lynch, and he had to commit to at least another sixty years to fulfill that responsibility. 

Well, the joke was on Gansey. Ronan Lynch never cared for legality before, he wasn’t about to start now. Besides that, Adam was a survivor. He would weather any storm life threw at him. Ronan had no doubt that Adam would not need him that way. He still kept those thoughts to himself, though, shuffled back into the territory of Not Thinking About it until Adam was safely in a deep sleep, like he was right then. Thinking about Adam, of course, brought his attention to Ronan, his dreaming consciousness just barely brushing against Ronan’s, curious but relaxed in a way he never achieved when he was awake. Ronan took a deep and unneeded breath, relaxing into the mental touch in hopes that Adam could see what he was seeing, feel what he was feeling.

The rush of adrenaline of going nearly ninety miles per hour on a twisting country back road at high noon, the light off the wet pavement from the morning storm almost blinding in spite of his enchanted leather bands and the sunglasses over his eyes. This was happiness. This was peace. This was part of this world that was worth it. 

He thought over what had brought him there, replaying it for Adam to see if he hadn’t been paying attention before. Meeting Kavinsky on the road, the rev of engines, the light changing from yellow to red to green and then they were off with the smell of burning rubber in their wake. His mind wandered back further, various races blurring together - Ronan had been racing for a long time. _’How long?’_ a whispered question, tired and dreamy. The countryside flashed by all around him. 

How long?

The memory was as vivid as if he was living it again, behind the wheel of is 1959 Chevy Bel Air, knuckles gripped tight to the steering wheel in one hand while the other held to the gear shift, his pulse racing as he waited for the scarf that served as a flag to be waved. He had a heartbeat back then for that. It thrilled him the way nothing else had, and as the scarf came down and they took off from the starting line only one coherent thought was in Ronan’s mind: _‘I am going to do this forever.’_

He let that memory help ease Adam back into deeper slumber again. Classic cars and high speeds and so much joy it threatened to make the heart burst. Ronan knew Adam hated what he was going through right now - the change took a wicked toll on the body, allowed for little that wasn’t eating and sleeping as your whole physiology shifted to accommodate becoming something new. Gansey had once called it going from caterpillar to butterfly with no chrysalis in between. Adam kept losing himself in the acute knowledge of the passage of time. Time he should be spending studying, should be spending working. 

It was a roundabout blessing, really, that the cover story was wild animal attack. It allowed him time to get used to the change when he was supposed to be in intensive care as far as anyone knew. Sleep that he had desperately needed in life as well and wasn’t getting enough of. Gansey obligingly fetched his homework for classes so he wouldn’t fall behind and spoke to his jobs for him, loath as Adam was to accept help. People did not understand Adam Parrish, but they liked him, and Gansey’s charm was hardly needed to get them to agree to assist in whatever way they could.

Technically all of that should have been Ronan’s job, but he was less suited to charm and more to intimidation to get his way, and barely went to class himself. 

Which was really what he was out doing while Adam was sleeping before he got caught up in drag racing. Kavinsky left in the dust behind him, Ronan glanced to the passenger seat where his cellphone lay, ringing. Declan. Ronan ignored it. Half a dozen hours until sunset and in that time he had to get fed, see a nun about a room and be back in time for when Adam woke up, surely hungry again.

* * *

The sun was setting when it made it back to Monmouth, three missed calls from Declan and one from Gansey having piled up in the meantime. The dying light painted the main living quarters of the repurposed building in brilliant scarlet and topaz hues. He could feel Adam’s steadily growing hunger radiating between them, not quite enough to wake him yet but edging on it. Personally, he wanted Adam sleeping in his room, in his bed, but he could respect Adam’s need for something that passed for his own space.

Besides, Chainsaw kept waking him up if he slept in Ronan’s room, and Noah hardly minded Adam (and Ronan) using his bed. 

Gansey was in the main room at his desk, phone against his ear. He looked up when Ronan entered, snapping his fingers to get Ronan’s attention and keep him from making a bee-line to Noah/Adam’s room while he quickly spoke into the receiver. 

“Yes, Mallory, I’m certain that’s quite a troublesome event - look, can I call you back in an hour? Yes, Ronan just got back - yes - _positively_. Wonderful, I’ll talk to you again soon.”

Ronan rolled his eyes but obligingly waited for Gansey to finish his call with the old man, though it didn’t pass without comment. 

“Isn’t he like a hundred years old now?” Ronan asked as soon as Gansey hung up the phone. “How is he not dead yet?”

“ _Lynch,_ ” Gansey scolded, as if Ronan’s name alone could be considered a curse. Depending on whom you asked, it could be. Ronan let out a scoff but said nothing more, looking expectantly at his friend instead for what had Gansey holding him up.

Gansey sighed, deep and tired, tapping his fingers against his desk before he decided that it was better to let the subject drop in favor of getting to the point.

“Declan came by,” he said 

“No shit,” Ronan replied, he’d seen the tire tracks on the gravel that matched Declan’s car. “Too bad I missed him.”

Ronan’s tone made it very clear that he wasn’t at all regretful. 

“He wasn’t here to see _you_ , actually,” Gansey said carefully. 

“What, he wanted to yell at you for whatever fee I had to pay for the thing with Parrish’ dad?”

“He was here to see _Parrish_ , Lynch,” Gansey finally said with exasperation. Ronan stilled, jaw tightening. 

“What the fuck for?” Ronan demanded. 

“ _You_ might not care that you have a supernatural pedigree, Lynch, but _Declan_ does. And Adam might not have been brought into your family in the most traditional way, but _you_ turned him, he has _your_ blood, _ergo_ Niall’s blood, _ergo_ Adam is the newest addition to the Lynch dynasty even if he never takes the name,” Gansey stood, rubbing at his chin with his thumb as he began to pace, restless and more than slightly frustrated. “Have you even _told him_ what that means for him?” 

“Hadn’t thought about it,” Ronan answered honestly.

“Well maybe you should start!” Gansey huffed, his head of steam from frustration finally coming to an end. He exhaled, rubbed his hand across his face, then started to gather his field notebook and phone. “Apparently the ley line has changed, it’s… different now. It’s like it woke up but no one’s done anything to make that happen. I’m going to go speak to Jane - we’re going to see if her mother or any of the other women in that Boston Marriage of a household know anything they’re willing to talk about.”

Difficult conversation officially over, Ronan gave a displeased snort of his own. 

“‘Boston Marriage’ - it’s twenty thirteen, Gansey. You can say ‘lesbians’.”

Gansey sputtered, face reddening. 

“That _doesn’t mean_ \- unmarried women naturally co-habitate with each other, it doesn’t make them all _’female adventurers’_.” 

You had to learn to deal with the changing of the times, it was the only way to survive and not fall into melancholy and eventual death. That was one of the reasons why there were so many rules about changing someone. Gansey, while a product of an illegal change and further even more deeply illegal abandonment, had proved remarkably able to roll with the differences and evolution of society that even the carefully vetted sometimes found difficult. 

Every now and then he showed his age, though. Like having to sometimes remind him that women were not, by default, all naturally asexual creatures. 

It was worth it to see the way he got worked up over it, the older slang he’d break out when flustered. Ronan found that one of the small joys of their friendship. 

So was the absolutely offended way Gansey managed to shoot a rude gesture to Ronan after Ronan yelled “GANSEY, THEY’RE LESBIANS!” after his retreating form. 

In the other room, across their connection, Ronan felt the hunger growing stronger in Adam. He’d be waking up soon, and Ronan wanted to be there for it.

It was probably a dick move, really. Or at least motivated by the kind of sort of more dickish aspects of Ronan’s personality, but he loved watching Adam wake up hungry. There was no real danger or worry to it since Ronan was always there to feed him, and within another night or two he’d learn to at least go a full day of sleep without being ready to frenzy now that his body no longer had its internal supply to work through. Ronan had to get his entertainment and fill of it while he could.

He left the door to the main room open as he made his way into Noah’s room where Adam slept, blankets tossed from his dreams. He had nightmares earlier in the day before Ronan was able to calm him with happy memories of his own to share. The older vampire kicked off his shoes and climbed onto the bed, situating himself between Adam’s legs. 

Ronan brought his wrist up to his mouth, tearing upon a vein on the edge of one of his fangs. 

“Wakey wakey,” Ronan murmured, holding his wrist above Adam’s face so a few drops of blood would fall onto his lips.

The effect was instant.

Adam’s eyes snapped open, completely black aside from a the thinnest ring of blue around the edge. He visibly drew in the scent of the blood, of the bleeding wrist right above his face. His grip when he grabbed Ronan’s arm would have easily snapped bone if Ronan had been human, teeth sinking into the offered flesh and sucking so hard Ronan could feel the bruises forming and healing and forming again. Adam drank and drank and drank, a feral growl rolling from his throat. 

Ronan figured he was probably pretty sick, but goddamn, it was such a turn on. Specifically the way when Adam had drank his fill he let his head fall back on the bed, reflexively gasping for breath he didn’t need but habit demanded, eyes hazy and sated. Aside from the red left on his lips, Adam’s face just after feeding from Ronan when he was particularly hungry was more or less identical to Adam’s post orgasm face. 

Ronan knew he should be ashamed. He was, a little bit, but he’d had seventy years to work through his issues or at least become comfortable with them. While Adam recovered, Ronan leaned in to kiss softly at the delicate line of his collarbone. 

“You’re an asshole,” Adam said without any real venom, hand reaching up to stroke the buzzed fuzz of Ronan’s hair, fingers tracing back and forth. Ronan gripped Adam’s thighs and pulled him just a little closer, close enough for Ronan’s clothed erection to bump against Adam’s crotch. It wasn’t enough for Adam to just drink his blood, Ronan wanted to be inside of Adam in other ways too and he let Adam feel that, shuddered with want at the low groan it drew from Adam. “I can’t believe you even have enough blood left for that.”

Ronan pushed Adam’s shirt up to his elbows so he could lick and suck at the dusky pink nipples, careful not to accidently break the skin even as he reached blindly to the nightstand for the one thing it now contained. Thank goodness Noah didn’t mind them using his bed for this, not that it would have really stopped Ronan even if he did. 

In spite of Adam’s scoffing or feigned reluctance, there was no hesitation as he lifted his hips when Ronan went to slide down the boxers he slept in, kicking them off the rest of the way once Ronan maneuvered them off one leg. 

He looked over Ronan’s shoulder, noted that the door wasn’t closed all the way, Ronan silently told him Gansey just left, and that was it for any actual reluctance. They didn’t even bother to get fully undressed, Ronan’s hunger and eagerness feeding into Adam’s, which fed into Ronan’s in return. When he was young he’d been told that was one of the dangers of turning someone you were in love with, of being _too_ in synch and losing yourselves in one another. It had sounded like such bullshit at the time. 

Slicking his fingers with lube from the bedstand and sliding them into Adam to stretch him, Ronan figured if he was a better man he’d probably owe someone an apology. Adam was responsible though, he wouldn’t let Ronan get too lost in the taste of his skin. Watching the way Adam gasped and squirmed and whimpered as Ronan crooked his fingers inside of him and stroked his insides though - every time was like his first race. 

_’I am going to do this forever.’_

“It’s good, good enough, come on -” Adam gasped, rocking his hips towards Ronan’s fingers even as he pulled them out to slick up his cock instead. It was the best feeling in the world, sliding into Adam, feeling Adam tightening around him and hearing those punched out moans of Ronan’s name on his lips. Living long enough to find Adam Parrish, it made every shitty thing in his life feel worth it. Ronan bit and kissed at Adam’s neck, his hands finding Adam’s to twine their fingers together as his hips pistoned. There was something a little desperate to it when they made love first thing in the evening, something that burned bright and hot, reaffirming their connection on every level. Like this, Ronan could lose himself in Adam, in the strange green and smell of the forest at the edges of Adam’s psyche. 

Ronan came first, having worked himself up much of the day in anticipation of it, but when he let go of one of Adam’s hands to take Adam’s cock in his hand and jerk him off, Adam wasn’t far behind. 

Sticky, satisfied, Adam reached back up to run his hand along Ronan’s buzzed hair again while Ronan stayed inside of him and busied himself with that spot on Adam’s neck he was deeply fond of. Adam’s mind drifted, and eventually he was thinking of the memory of Ronan’s first race that he’d shared. Ronan’s hair was longer back then, dark and curly. It had been buzzed down to stubble as long as Adam knew him. 

“What happened to the car?” 

“Mmm?” Ronan asked, still rather preoccupied with the line of Adam’s throat, the pale skin of his neck and jaw, of the idea of just staying in Adam until he could get it up again and they could go for round two. 

“The car, in the - the Chevy Bel Air,” Adam said, staring up at the ceiling of Noah’s room, trying not to squirm. He’d never seen the car, Ronan only drove his father’s BMW now. 

“Oh. I totaled it,” Ronan said, as if it was nothing to total a car. 

For him it wasn’t. When you could just walk away from car crashes without a scratch and had a love for speed, there were a lot of chrome casualties littered in your wake. His father’s car was the only one he took care with. 

“You’re an asshole,” Adam repeated, with a bit more meaning to it this time, this time pulling back just enough to make it clear that Ronan was not getting another sexy round two right away, biting back a whimper as Ronan obligingly pulled out. He did know how important it was to take care of things and to treasure them, and it wasn’t that Ronan _didn’t_ understand that… it’s just that, well…

He loved cars. He loved them so much it felt like his heart would burst from it sometimes. But the love of them was tied directly to what they provided. Speed, freedom, joy, escape. They were never classics when he purchased them, they probably would have been worth a lot of he’d let them sit in some garage with a tarp to keep them from gathering dust, but he might have just as well thrown the key away if he was going to do that. Owning them without using them gave him nothing. Owning them and using them for what they were created for until there was nothing left gave him everything. 

The feelings passed in the silence between them, and Adam’s hands on his head turned to softer, gentler caresses. 

God. It was something holy, what they had between them. He hated words, hated how they screwed up what he meant to say. This, the connection he had with Adam, it bypassed all of it. Emotion to emotion. A perfect communication.

“Do you ever sleep?” Adam asked softly. Ronan and Gansey were insomniacs, but that was something uniquely them, something they’d been in life rather than something that happened due to their age and current state of existence. At the edges of Ronan’s mind dark things lurked, memories of creatures not of this world, shadow and claws and a taste for his blood in particular. All waiting for him to fall asleep again.

Suspicion and curiosity began to grow in Adam, and Ronan shifted on the bed, sitting back on his haunches as if a greater physical distance between them would do anything. He didn’t want to talk about it. He’d have to, eventually. Sooner or later Adam would know, but he wanted another day to ignore that. 

Adam pushed himself up to lean back on his elbows, looking up at Ronan, face the blank of concentration he got when he was puzzling over something, careful and neutral. If he wanted to press, he’d find it out. Ronan quite literally could not stop him. 

“Okay,” Adam said instead, raising a leg to bump against Ronan’s side with his knee. “You already know all of my demons, though. Yours don’t scare me.” 

Ronan desperately hoped it would stay that way.


	2. Ronan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan has a surprise for Adam, they meet a less than friendly face on the road, and start to piece together that something else is going on with Adam's turning. Took 'em long enough.

The beginning of the night was spent in what was quickly becoming routine for them, if the last two weeks were any indication. Wake up, feed, sometimes fuck, sometimes shower after the fucking, Adam getting dressed and studying to keep up with school so he wouldn’t be at a loss once he returned, then whatever business Ronan had planned for that particular day. 

It wasn’t much of a routine, really. When Gansey wasn’t otherwise occupied they worked on the search for Glendower. Ronan would have been content to spend the time with Adam doing positively nothing but it quickly became clear that free time was a foreign and unsettling concept to Adam Parrish and the less he had right now the better. Free time meant him focusing on the passage of it, on trying to wrap his mind around dealing with the idea of not having enough time to suddenly having an eternity. That it was no longer a race against the clock to graduate Aglionby with the best grades possible to get a good college to get a good job to get _out_. 

That he could be like Gansey now, who was so in love with academia that he had attended high school and college more times than Ronan could count for the pleasure of learning alone, of keeping up with what was considered basic knowledge for the changing times. Hell, he could be like Ronan who was approaching eighty and had never once graduated high school in all that time, on his third much-pressured attempt to do it at least once.

Alright, it was pretty obvious he’d be more like Gansey when it came to how he was going to spend his eternity. Ronan magnanimously did not hold it against him. While Adam studied and Ronan watched him study, Ronan’s phone buzzed from where it was discarded on Gansey’s desk with the signal of a text. Ronan’s disgust was so palpable at just the sound it made that Adam sighed. 

“You hate phones so much it would make someone wonder if you were born before their invention,” Adam said, standing and fetching Ronan’s cell to check the text. Either Adam did it or it went unread. “Gansey says Persephone was particularly cryptic but Fox Way was otherwise unhelpful. He wants to know if we were going to Cabeswater at all tonight.” 

There was entertainment coloring Adam’s voice. Gansey had specifically addressed the text to Adam, rightly knowing that Ronan would not be the one to read it. 

“That was the plan,” Ronan said, as if he had one at all. “I got a surprise for you first though.” 

Adam didn’t raise his head but he did glance up from the phone out of the corner of his eyes, a small smile tugging at his lips and amusement coloring his mind. 

“Oh? Is it on Noah’s bed again? It’s starting to feel a little awkward…” Adam said, still smiling. 

“I don’t mind,” came a soft sigh from Noah’s doorway. “It’s more action than I can give it. Not for lack of trying.” 

Both Adam and Ronan startled at the sudden appearance of the more oft than not absent third roommate of Monmouth Manufacturing. To be perfectly frank, Ronan still wasn’t exactly sure how the whole ghost thing worked for Noah - then again, Noah acted equally in the dark. He did seem to think it was a unique circumstance though.

That was a relief. It seemed awful that everything about vampire society was built around finding a way for a kind end if you wanted it only to find out you were then trapped on this world no matter what. Then again perhaps it was about the particular circumstance of his death. He claimed, at least, to not remember, but he had confided in them recently that it was not a suicide. 

“Can’t imagine your kind of dead yields a whole lot of action,” Ronan said once he recovered from the surprise, grabbing one of the crumpled up wads of paper from Gansey’s wastebin to chuck at Noah’s form. It struck him, bouncing off his shirt to roll across the floor. Noah pouted faintly. 

“You never know. Blue’s single now, right?” 

Okay, _that_ was worth it if only for the way Adam startled again and made a stifled choking sound.

Ronan did as well, but it was all performative on his part. He really did not understand the appeal of the midget. 

“You might as well come with since you’re here,” Ronan said, finally moving the conversation back to the point and things he was actually interested in. He needed to show Adam his surprise before Adam picked up the nervous excitement from Ronan and followed that thread to finding it out on his own. Ronan hadn’t carefully arranged it while Adam was in a deep sleep for nothing.

* * *

Even without Gansey and Blue, it felt halfway back to normal with Ronan, Adam, and Noah all piling into Ronan’s BMW to head into the night for shenanigans. Adam texted Gansey back that they would meet him and Blue at Cabeswater, and Noah messed with the radio and managed to find music that offended both Ronan AND Adam’s sensibilities, which he felt deserved an award. 

Noah also did his thing where he seemed perfectly capable of following the conversation even when more than half of it wasn’t spoken aloud anymore. Gansey had already gotten flustered by Adam and Ronan’s private communication and they both tried to keep it down when they weren’t alone, but Noah’s rolling with it due to whatever it was he could do as the strange double dead thing he was hadn’t been making it easy. 

Saint Agnes Church was, conveniently, on the way to Cabeswater. Adam recognized the building as they pulled into the parking lot at an angle that was roguish at best. 

“Do I need to get baptized to save my now dammed soul?” he asked Ronan. It was mostly a joke. Ronan grinned and said nothing, though he entertained the image of Adam dressed in white all wet. 

“Do you think there’s actual baptism pornography?” Noah asked from the back seat, all wide eyed curiosity that neither boy bought from him anymore. Ronan suspected that you needed to go back to the era of disco and casual drug use and sex to find a less innocent soul, as nonthreatening and nonsexual as Noah appeared to be to those that didn’t bother to pay attention to him. 

The church itself was empty and as tempting as it was to pull Adam into the main building, they did have Noah as a chaperon and what he wanted was not in the church itself. Debating vocally with Noah on whether or not baptism porn existed, Ronan lead the two to the side of the church building to the almost hidden set of rickety stairs up to the small, currently empty room. 

It was dusty, and the ceiling was slanted at an angle that meant Ronan and Adam had to duck at points. It had a bathroom with a shower and a bath though, and at least two electrical outlets that were visible at a glance, though whether they worked was up for debate. In the upper corner of the one real window a small spider had made her web before apparently abandoning the small room for greener pastures.

“What’s this?” Adam asked, looking around. It took very little time to pace the small area.

“Yours,” Ronan said. “If you want it.” 

Adam looked away from the window to Ronan, his pale eyebrows raised. Suspicion, wounded pride. Ronan frowned and tried to express as best he could - he understood Adam needed his own place, his own space. He didn’t want to live at Monmouth with Gansey and Ronan, so.

Ronan had made arrangements with the nuns. They’d rent the room to Adam as a nonprofit. 

“How much?” Adam asked first. 

Ronan answered, but didn’t give any time for Adam to work on overdrive of all the ways he’d have to work himself to the bone before adding, “I’d pay the first year - technically I’m supposed to fucking baby you for the next, what, seventeen to twenty years?” but whatever, that’d just piss Adam off - he wouldn’t pay at all but it was Ronan’s fault he was now working at a loss from the time he needed to take off of work to learn to cope with his new existence - and Adam had Aglionby tuition to deal with that he was insisting on paying for himself. 

Adam still didn’t like the charity - _it isn’t charity, I’m being responsible for my own fuckups, dipshit, isn’t this what you always complain about me not doing?_ \- but he was short on options, and even as he went to the window to look out of it and let his mind work on counting every theoretical dollar he could earn every day and how much of that would go to Aglionby and how much would he not need due to not needing to pay for food and how much of that could be used to pay for the small apartment… Ronan could feel the undercurrent of wary hope there. Of a fondness already growing for this terribly small space that would be too cold in winter and too hot in summer. A place that would be his own, at least until he got out of Henrietta entirely. 

The groan of ancient piping interrupted their thoughts and Noah let out a yelp from the bathroom only to appear at the doorway a moment later. 

“The shower works. If you were curious.” 

Adam turned from Noah to Ronan. 

“... When can I move in?”

* * *

In Ronan’s car again they figured out when exactly Adam would move in. Ronan and Gansey had already gotten Adam’s few things from the trailer, and he had not asked how it went. Once Adam was officially ‘out of the hospital’ and able to function day to day without Ronan being joined at the hip to him they’d bring over his things to Saint Agnes. Noah offered to help decorate. Adam gently turned him down. Ronan offered to help decorate as well. Adam turned him down significantly less gently. 

The night was quiet around them, but filled with potential.

It wasn’t that Ronan was _unobservant_ , but few could match Adam Parrish in terms of being able to read the subtlest of cues in a room, and being plugged directly into his mind made Ronan starkly aware of that. So it was Adam that noticed it first, but Ronan was only half a second behind him. 

First it was how silent Noah had gone. A glance in the rear view mirror showed he was still back there, even if he ducked quickly out of sight of the reflection. Ronan couldn’t blame him - Noah had somehow always looked so _wrong_ when reflected in mirrors and it was inevitably an unpleasant experience for all involved. 

Still, the glance back showed what had probably caused Noah’s sudden silence, and what had absolutely caused the sudden roll of contempt from Adam. Kavinsky’s EVO. 

“He dresses like he fell out of a vaporwave video,” Noah muttered from the back seat where he still slouched down, just barely visible. He’d been popping in and out of visibility a lot lately, Adam observed in the quiet of his own mind. Ronan hadn’t noticed until it was pointed out.

Another benefit of being plugged into Adam Parrish’ mind - being able to hear the positively savage snide remarks he almost never voiced. God, there were many. Like the gem of asking if Kavinsky was actually created in the 80’s and never moved past it, or if his current look was a conscious choice on his part. 

Ronan snorted, distracted by that thought. He didn’t know, to be honest. He’d met Kavinsky at the same time Adam did, when he transferred to Aglionby from New Jersey last year. As far as his creation, Kavinsky had told a hundred different stories about it, each less plausible than the last. All that Ronan knew for certain about him was that he was also a vampire, like Gansey preferred to feed off of humans, and didn’t know how to handle a stick shift properly. 

“I can’t believe you beat him in a race with this,” Adam said dryly, turning his head to glance back at Noah, a little worried at the boy hunched up in the back seat. Shadowy, but still visible. 

“They say seeing is believing, right?” Ronan said, glancing in the rear view only once more before slowing down just enough that the next stop light turned red by the time they reached it. Kavinsky’s EVO pulled up beside them on Ronan’s side of the BMW. The feeling of contempt from Adam grew stronger, uncaring that Ronan sensed it, and Noah scooted to the seat behind him. 

It had been a warm night, so Ronan’s window was already open when Kavinsky rolled his down. 

“What’s with the trailer trash? Dick putting you in the doghouse?” Kavinsky called. 

_’Is he always so sure about things he’s so wrong about or are you a special case for making him stupid?’_ Adam asked Ronan silently with a raised eyebrow. Ronan couldn’t help it, he let out a barking laugh. 

One that was delayed enough that it clearly had _nothing_ to do with what Kavinsky had just said. 

The Jersey boy ripped off his sunglasses so fast Ronan actually wondered if he broke them in the action, looking between Ronan and Adam as he pieced together the only explanation for what could have had Ronan laughing at what seemed like total silence. 

“Are you _fucking kidding me_?”

Really, Ronan would have liked to continue that pissing contest, because he was perpetually thirteen in a lot of ways, but Adam cut him off by looking down at his watch then back up at Ronan, giving Kavinsky not a moment more of his attention. The funny thing was, to Ronan at least, it wasn’t even an intentional diss on Adam’s part. Kavinsky had been considered and dismissed and that was that, the same way Adam shut down other members of their class. Ronan loved it. 

“If you want to have your fun, make it fast. They’re probably already waiting for us.” 

“Alright, alright…” Ronan sighed. Then, mostly to be an asshole, he leaned over and pulled Adam into a quick, deep kiss.

It made winning the race afterwards _that much_ better.

* * *

Noah was back to his normal self again when they made it to the edge of Cabeswater, parking the BMW next to Gansey’s camaro which Blue and him were leaning against the back bumper of.

Noah was out first, jogging the couple steps to Blue to give her a tight hug that she laughed and returned, even as she complained of how cold he was. Ronan gave a mental gagging sound, the same he’d made when Adam had thought of how pretty she was. 

She was alright, sure, less annoying now that Adam had broken up with her, but he still didn’t get what the fuss was that drove Gansey and Adam to so much distraction and had Noah orbiting like a particularly loving satellite. Well, alright, Noah probably wanted to get laid and Blue was on the very short list of people who had no problem consistently perceiving him. 

It was Adam’s first time seeing Blue since their break up, and the nervous anticipation rolled off of him in waves even as he looked calm and composed as ever on the outside. Still, when she saw him, she smiled and detached herself from Noah so that she could give him a hug too - Ronan couldn’t squash a spike of jealousy that flared up - and the nervousness faded in favor of relief. They were good, Adam’s easing psyche transmitted without intention. It would be awkward for a little bit, but no real damage done. 

“Parrish and I will need to eat again before we go, but we’ll save that until the maggot is gone,” Ronan said, talking to Gansey as if Blue wasn’t there. Not that he was at all jealous of that attention.

“I can’t believe you kill animals _here,_ ” Blue started, which was really what Ronan was waiting for as he crowded into her space, fixing her with his standard stare that made lesser men cower.

“Why, you volunteering? I can’t imagine maggot tastes good but _hey_...” 

The touch on his back was light, calming. Ronan had not really needed to be pulled back since Adam had been turned, too preoccupied with keeping his new charge safe, but that road went both ways. This time it wasn’t Gansey who calmed Ronan, but Adam. 

_’Don’t get me wrong, you need to control yourself. I’m not your master,’_ Adam thought as his touch stilled Ronan even as Blue sputtered at his words, not at all cowed by them or the stare. _’But you don’t need to be jealous anymore... you WERE jealous before, weren’t you?’_

Ronan gave one last sneer at Blue before he looked back at Adam, impassive stare met for impassive stare, then turned to stomp off into the underbrush. 

“Let’s get moving, I’m fucking starving.”

* * *

Gansey explained the current situation as they made their way through the dark nighttime forest, three vampires, one ghost, and one daughter of a psychic. Adam thought Blue was brave for her lack of fear in her situation, Ronan thought she was being an idiot. They would have to agree to disagree. 

There was a coven of witches just outside of Radford that Gansey had been friendly with for generations, and like Blue’s family they stayed where they were because of the ley line. It made magic stronger and easier even as it slumbered. Not that Ronan ever felt he needed to know the finer details of witchcraft, but Gansey had picked quite a bit up in his dealings with the family and found that the magic _they_ used, at least, had little to do with the ley line in an active sense. Being near it was all you needed for a little extra oomph, it did not factor into any of their specific spellwork directly, they didn’t draw from the energies of it. That had been what brought him to seek out Fox Way in the first place. The witches knew and trusted Richard Campell Gansey III, and would have been happy to help him as much as they could but anything beyond the existence of it was out of their area. 

They had still noticed the signs, though. The strange things that occurred along where the line would have cut through their area of Virginia. Knowing Gansey’s interest in it, they had brought it to his attention when he had Adam’s watch enchanted. Surges here and there along the line, where there had once only been a steady trickle of energy it was now raging rapids of it, spilling into the surrounding countryside and flooding meadows and fields. Some way, some _how_ , the ley line had been activated.

In Cabeswater, once they were far enough into the trees that the cars had fallen out of sight, it wasn’t difficult to tell. The whole place _felt_ different when they moved past the area Ronan hunted in, radically alive the deeper they went. Gansey, Noah, and Blue all slowed their walk, they hadn’t been here to hunt and were unsettled by the changes as the wind almost sounded like a whisper through the trees. 

Ronan was, as usual as of late, distracted by Adam. 

He walked like a man with a purpose, his eyes far away. When the others slowed their pace to get their bearings, Adam continued onward, certain of his direction, of his goal. Through Adam, Ronan could _hear_ it, the wind truly made into words in Adam’s ears, the press of wet leaves crowding into Adam’s mind. A whisper, _Greywaren_ -

Ronan jogged head to catch up with Adam, reaching out to grab the other vampire’s wrist to stop him. When he looked back, Ronan saw that they had almost lost sight of the other three adventurers. How had they gotten so separated? 

“Adam?” Ronan asked, voice tense. When Adam didn’t respond right away, Ronan tried again, and if Adam didn’t respond this time he’d just have to open up a vein to get his attention- “ _Adam._ ”

Adam blinked, dazed, looking around at the forest before back at Ronan, down to where Ronan grabbed his wrist. Confusion colored his mind as his brow lined ever so slightly with the effort as he tried to figure out what had happened and drew a blank. 

Adam had no memory of the minutes that had passed since they lost sight of the cars. 

“Okay, enough fucking spooky forest bullshit,” Ronan said, voice deceptively aggressive compared to the gentleness of his touch as he lead Adam back to where the other three were. “Adam’s hungry, this is bullshit, we’re fucking off.”

Adam _was_ hungry, though his hunger was a distant thing, still distracted by the sounds of the forest itself. A hum, a laughter, the sound of crying, a few notes of a song.

Gansey snapped his fingers. 

“That reminds me, Parrish - _Parrish!_ ” 

Adam startled again, looking back to Gansey. Unable to feel Gansey through an invisible connection meant he actually had to focus on his friend, that better snapped him out of the daze than Ronan had. Blue’s concern was palpable, Noah seemed impassive. Ronan considered throwing him in the small river. 

Gansey fished his glass bottle that used to house V8 from his bag, holding it out to Adam.

“Here, try this,” Gansey offered, concerned. Ronan had an idea of what would happen even before it did, but Adam was often willing to humor Gansey. Ronan let go of Adam’s wrist so he could take the bottle, and he unscrewed the top and took a hesitant sip of the liquid. 

To his credit, he didn’t spit it out or anything, but Adam did cough heartily and only just barely swallowed before quickly holding the bottle back to Gansey. 

“What _is_ that?” Adam asked. Ronan struggled not to laugh. 

“... B Positive, I believe.” Gansey said mildly. 

“You had to know that would happen,” Ronan replied snidely. Gansey looked offended. 

“Not every single Lynch is animals only, Adam could have been an exception!” Gansey said, cunningly manage to avoid mentioning Declan by name. Tastes for blood tended to run alongside the tastes of whoever turned you. Niall preferred animals but had nothing against the taste of humans, which meant Matthew had almost the exact same preference, Declan mildly preferred animals but drank whatever was available, and Ronan thought humans as a whole tasted disgusting.

And, apparently, Adam took after Ronan there. 

“Well this has been a hayburner of a night. I apologize for wasting your time, Jane,” Gansey continued, turning his attention to Blue who had watched the proceeding with a mild fascination. She shook her head. 

“It’s almost curfew anyway. I mean, I _think._ I’m not sure if I have a curfew but it is almost midnight and that sounds like a normal curfew time, doesn’t it? It was good to see you again, Adam,” She reached across to squeeze his hand. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

* * *

Noah tagged along with Blue and Gansey when they left Cabeswater, raising an eyebrow knowingly when he waved goodbye to Ronan and Adam. Ronan gave a very rude gesture in return. He couldn’t hear Noah’s laughter from the inside of the Pig, but he saw the way the ghost held his sides and went through the motions of it enough to catch Blue’s attention at least.

So he flipped the bird with the other finger as well. 

Adam didn’t try to stop him this time, just rolled his eyes. Ronan Lynch was his own man who needed to handle his own shit - Gansey was the one obsessed with turning him into a productive member of society, Adam was the one who thought he should crash and burn on his own merits.

It was part of what Ronan liked about Adam. 

It was however another night, and as such another attempt to teach Adam to hunt. It never went as badly as the first time again, though Adam had yet to make a successful kill. He psyched himself out more often than not, deep scars of a lifetime of violence not being something that could be healed in two short weeks. Ronan would not have bothered, except it gave them a chance to be alone in Cabeswater and he wanted Adam to be able to go on even if something terrible happened to Ronan. 

He lived his life rather recklessly, it was a constant possibility.

They tried to stick to the edges of Cabeswater after what had happened earlier, but it was easy to get turned around in the forest and it wasn’t like the deer were equally wary. Shadowing Ronan, Adam was able to successfully help him in taking an animal down, though Ronan handled the kill itself. It was the best Adam had done so far, really, and after draining it dry Ronan was prepared to fuck Adam into the mossy ground again when he looked up and realized Adam wasn’t looking at him like he always was.

He was looking off into the trees, face blank, mind a mass of branches and leaves and whispers on the wind. Adam, personally, did not think he was in danger. Only calm came off of him, the same sort of dreamy relaxation that only showed for him in sleep, where his anxiety ebbed away. Even his hunger was a dimmed, distant thing. Like Adam was somewhere else, though Ronan could see him standing right there.

Reaching up, Ronan touched his hand. Adam’s fingers easily curled around Ronan’s. Words echoed through his mind, from Adam’s mind, but it wasn’t _Adam_. _’Greywaren,’_ they whispered. 

Ronan didn’t try to shake Adam out of it this time or call his name. He jumped right to drastic measures, bringing his wrist up to his mouth to cut open the skin there for the second time tonight. 

It wasn’t as instant as when Adam was starving, but he’d probably always respond to the smell of Ronan’s blood - especially with how they intended to keep up their connection. It didn’t take long but every minute that passed felt like an eternity in miniature, the green and leaves receding back into Adam’s mind, letting his awareness return slowly as if waking up from sleep. 

“Ronan?” Adam murmured softly.

“I’m right here,” Ronan said, holding his other arm out to Adam, offering up his blood. Whatever it took to keep Adam in the _here_ and _now_. When they last checked the time it was well into the area marked as ‘early morning’ rather than ‘late night’ and Adam was still young enough to need to sleep during the day, anything actionable would have to wait until tomorrow evening after it got dark again. Even so… 

“...I think I need to go see Persephone,” Adam said.


	3. Adam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uncomfortable with what occurred at Cabeswater, Adam asks Ronan if there isn't somewhere else they can finish the night's feeding at. Ronan starts to open up about some of his secrets to Adam.
> 
> (They also bang in this chapter.)

“You need to eat,” Ronan said when they returned to the BMW, his hands gripping the steering wheel. 

“I’m not that hungry yet,” Adam replied. The lie would have been easier if Ronan wasn’t able to feel what he felt, the hunger at the peripheral. Somehow, the reminder that he had constantly lived in that state while human didn’t put Ronan any more at ease. 

“If you don’t eat before sunrise you’ll frenzy before the next sunset,” Ronan said. He hadn’t moved to turn the car on, but they were safely out of the thicket of Cabeswater, back to where they’d parked. Adam set his jaw. He wasn’t going back in there, not tonight. Not before he could talk to Persephone, to _someone_ who might have an idea of what was going on with him which was, apparently, _not fucking normal_. 

“You and Gansey can go days without eating sometimes,” Adam pointed out, the edge of hunger wearing on his already frayed calm. 

“And we’re fucking fully mature vampires or close to it. I’ve been a vampire for over fifty years and Gansey’s been one for almost a hundred - You’ve been one for _two fucking weeks_ Parrish, would it fucking kill you to _trust me_?”

“ _Apparently, yes,_ ” Adam answered, voice cold. 

Silence fell over the car, neither boy looking at each other. 

The sting of regret came almost as soon as the two-word reply had. Adam didn’t apologize, because neither of them apologized for such things. That Adam was the first to have his temper break between the two of them was merely chance. It could have just as easily been Ronan. 

They were vicious, angry creatures. Teenagers, and technically they always would be. 

Ronan was right - Adam could acknowledge that once he had time to calm down in the silence of the car, of the forest around them blocking out any sounds from distant roads. He woke up with an almost uncontrollable hunger as it was, and Ronan was ensuring that he fed within hours of sleeping. The once comforting forest now seemed disquieting, its shadows hiding secrets that begged to be whispered to Adam, and he was certain that whatever knowledge they imparted to him could not be unknown once known. Adam Parrish had spent too much time in his life where the one thing he could control was Adam Parrish, and the possibility of losing even that was unbearable. 

“Is there somewhere else we can go?” He asked Ronan, finally breaking the silence as the muddled feelings bled through their connection. Ronan’s grip on the wheel shifted, and he turned the key to let the engine wake like a sleeping dragon. 

“Yeah,” Ronan said, the uncertainty and worry bleeding away from him. “I know a place.”

* * *

Moon-drenched farmland passed by the window of the BMW as it ate the asphalt of the road, an eternally hungry beast sometimes as unearthly as the one that controlled it. Resting his head back against the car seat that was practically becoming a second home to Adam as it was, he turned to look at Ronan while the other young man drove. The full moon lit up his sharp profile, skin washed out to almost pure white in the pale light of the evening, the shadow of stubble across his cheeks and chin just starting to show. Farther away from Cabeswater, Adam was more relaxed again. He still felt it, heard it, at the edges of his perception, but in the car with Ronan it was easy to let Ronan overtake and drown it out. 

He wondered how the stubble on Ronan’s face would feel against his skin. Adam had come to understand his attraction to men at the same time he understood his attraction to women, but when just living and breathing and existing under his father’s roof was dangerous he didn’t kid himself into the belief that said attraction could ever be anything other than a quiet thought kept at the back of his mind, just for himself.

Now… 

Now Ronan let go of the gear shift on the empty country road in front of them as he went almost double the speed limit so that he could take one of Adam’s hands and bring it up to press Adam’s palm against his cheek, tilting his head just enough to let his dry lips brush against Adam’s skin. Even small and brief the kiss was electric. 

Adam recognized the signs for Singer Falls. A twenty minute drive, they’d made it in just over ten. 

The roads they took from there was a strange mix of alien and as familiar as the veins under his own skin. Adam Parrish had never been here before. Ronan lived here for fifty years, it was the place his heart would always live, the place he longed to return to with every fiber of his being. He had to go slow the closer they got to his home, the familiar twisting roads gravel instead of pavement proper, long branches from plum trees heavy with fruit hanging low and untended to. It was a small miracle that they didn’t need to get out of the car at any point to clear debris from the ground. 

No, not a miracle, Declan came by sometimes. The anger and bitterness at the very thought of his brother - even from his own mind - cooled the heat between them enough to let them focus on the actual task. 

When Ronan put the car in park, they sat in silence for a few moments. To one side, fireflies lit across the fields, even out of season, fallen stars come down to dance among the grass before they returned to the sky. To the other side and around the edges of the field, a lush forest dark and inviting waited, pale shadows of curious creatures just barely visible. Huckleberries grew wild everywhere. One light was on in the large farmhouse, just barely visible behind closed curtains though no other cars were in the driveway. 

The whole place felt like walking into a dream. It gave Adam the same relaxed feeling as if he was asleep. _You are safe here,_ the Barns seemed to whisper. 

_’It’s beautiful,’_ he thought, not wanting to break the perfect silence of the night around them. He could see how Ronan’s heart ached to return to it. Even someone as desperate to take flight as Adam could see that this was a place worth returning to. 

“Yeah… well, I’m also technically not supposed to be here, so. Keep an ear out for cars in case we need to split,” Ronan said, breaking the silence himself because that was what Ronan did when he couldn’t bear to see someone else break something. 

They didn’t go to the farmhouse, or to the field littered with fireflies and the dark shapes of barns. Instead they went right into the thicket of the forest. Adam shadowed Ronan, as he had learned to do perfectly these last few days.

Adam had never seen so many creatures. 

The herd of deer that passed through it was impossible in size, brazen and fearless of Ronan and, by extension, Adam. A small white faun separated from the pack and came right up to Ronan, nosing at his hand as if a horse searching for treats and giving a disdainful sniff when it found none, forgiving him only when he brought his hand up to gently stroke between its ears. The bold, confidant creature reminded Adam so much of Ronan, and yet to Ronan its self-assured manner struck him like Adam. Ronan let his hand slide down to give it a small scratch under the chin before he made a soft sound to shoo it back towards the rest of the herd that had waited for him. Together they moved like a school of fish, pale shadows against the trees until they managed to vanish from sight. 

“This can’t be real…” Adam whispered, staring at where they had gone, holding so very still aside from what was needed to speak. There was no silence to break here - night birds called among the trees, crickets chirped loudly in expectation as they were on the cusp of summer. “I have to be dreaming.” 

“I know when I’m asleep and when I’m awake,” Ronan replied. He had eaten at Cabeswater, it was Adam that needed to feed next, then Ronan to make up for what Adam had taken from him. They walked in companionable silence for a time, exploring the oak and cypress trees that seemed to go on forever. Ronan picked some huckleberries and confirmed that while they _could_ eat human food still it would simply not offer any of the nutrition needed to live. Still, it could be pleasant. He held up a berry in offering by example, and Adam took it from between Ronan’s fingers with his mouth. Mostly to watch the way Ronan watched him do it. A hunger that had nothing to do with blood. 

A juvenile, joyous thought crossed Ronan’s mind - _I’ll race you back to the fields_ \- and that was all it took for the two to be off, running through the forest and darting around the trees and bushes. Ronan had no true advantage - Adam had all of his memories which surfaced unbidden of how the forest was laid out, and Ronan collided with Adam when they broke through the tree line to send them both crashing into the long grass of the fields, laughing breathlessly as they hit the ground. It was Ronan, it was Ronan’s infectious good mood just from being in the place he called home. Everything that wasn’t joy got turned to anger for him, but when he was happy there was so much of it his heart could burst from it. They kissed, playful and chaste at first, growing more heated as the hunger took over, until Ronan was shifting to be between Adam’s legs, grinding his hips against Adam’s as Adam pulled him down for kiss after kiss and delighted at the feeling of stubble against his cheeks and lips. 

Adam was realizing belatedly that he was being spoiled by what he had with Ronan. Blue had been his first real ‘significant other’ before Ronan, and he had gone from hand holding and the occasional hug flying completely blind in the darkness to something where they literally could read each other’s minds and know exactly what the other wanted, letting their shared desire feed into each other, and both were up for anything. They didn’t have to waste time with discussion or risk just going for it and making something weird. Ronan let his lips trail from Adam’s down to his neck, licking and sucking at the paler skin while he blindly grabbed the lube from his jacket’s pocket. 

Adam would have laughed, but it was just getting sensible to keep it on him at all times now. Especially if feeding was going to be involved. 

Thoughts passed rapidly between them. _There_ and _like this_ and _slower this time_ and _bite me_. 

Ronan and Adam had hastily shucked Adam’s jeans just in time for Ronan to slick his fingers and slide one inside Adam to prepare when it was Adam’s turn to press his lips against Ronan’s neck and bite down. Ronan groaned, his clothed erection rubbing hard against one of Adam’s thighs while he held the other one up against the grass so he could have access to Adam’s hole. He was still a little loose from their desperate fuck early in the morning, and a second finger slid in with almost no fuss. It proved helpful, because Ronan had at best half a brain when Adam was sucking his blood. The feel of Adam drinking it down, drinking the very essence of _him_ down, of how Adam _needed_ it but still savored the taste of it - Adam let himself feel a little pride at how often Ronan thought he could get off just from Adam sucking his blood. 

Maybe someday they’d try, but so far Adam had always needed more than that. Ronan’s lust inevitably sparked the flame in him as well, and afterwards _he_ was freshly fed and wired on it. Adam was getting pretty good at feeding off of Ronan - of finding where the line was to pull back while taking as much as he could without crippling Ronan for it. 

Usually, anyway. When Ronan started fingering him before Adam was done eating, it was a little difficult to keep focus. Especially with how Ronan was getting far too good at finding that wonderful spot inside of him and shamelessly putting as much pressure on it as he could.

Adam fell back on the grass, tongue darting out to lick what was left of Ronan’s blood off his lips as Ronan slid the third finger into him, crooking them just right to rub against Adam’s prostate once more. He bucked his hips up into it, Ronan leaning just far back enough to not give his cock any friction from the movement and Adam was too briefly spaced out to resist a faint whine from it. A burst of prayers and profanity alike came from Ronan - some silent expressions of thought, others a rough whisper. He repeated the movement again and again, a little dizzy himself and entranced by the way Adam squirmed and moaned. 

“Think you could come just from this?” Ronan asked, thoughtful. No matter what Adam’s answer was he wanted to try, but Adam wanted something more substantial inside of him right then. 

“Probably,” he answered just the same, because Ronan would know even if he didn’t. One more press and Ronan let his fingers slide from Adam, falling easily back against the grass at Adam’s push, and Adam was over him a second later, straddling Ronan’s waist. Though Ronan’s eyes weren’t quite glassy, they were having trouble focusing perfectly. 

Worry crossed Adam’s features, cooling his blood just a fraction. “Are you-” he began, but Ronan guided Adam’s hand to the front of his jeans where his cock strained against the denim. 

“Got enough blood left for this,” Ronan said, cheeky. Fears quelled, Adam didn’t have quite enough focus left to be annoyed at that flippancy. He got Ronan’s jeans open without tearing them, sliding them down his thighs and slicking up his cock with the discarded bottle of lube before tossing it back into the grass next to them. Then Adam took his time, guiding Ronan’s cock into him, sliding down inch by inch and savoring each one. Ronan’s grip was tight on Adam’s thighs before he even made it halfway down, needy whimpers drawn from Ronan’s throat. 

At least it wasn’t just Adam who felt so desperate for each touch. 

_Look at me,_ Ronan’s thoughts demanded. The heat of lust was heavy in Ronan’s unblinking gaze as he watched Adam. The intensity of it was almost too much, especially with how hot he was inside of Adam where they were joined. A part of Adam wanted to look away, still self-conscious of his own self image and how strange it stood against the one Ronan had of him. 

Adam had never looked away from Ronan’s stare in the past, however. He wasn’t going to start now. 

One hand still braced against Ronan’s chest, Adam reached down with the other to remove one of Ronan’s from his thigh so he could thread their fingers together, to hold tight as he sunk the final few increments down so that Ronan was fully sheathed within him. They both let out a shuddering moan from that. Ronan’s blood inside of him, _Ronan_ inside of him, they were as joined as two separate people could be. Even if Adam hadn’t found it surprisingly thrilling on his own - which he had - the way that thought got Ronan going every time would have been able to get Adam to full hardness alone. 

Fucking in the field of the Barns, of the place that was so very _Ronan_ , it was like being surrounded by him as well, like making love in the back seat of his car but with much more space for Adam to ride Ronan, which they both favored. 

Ronan grinned again, bucking his hips up just slightly. Adam pressed down firmer on his chest just slightly, one eyebrow raised. 

He set the pace slowly as he moved up and down on Ronan’s cock, slow enough to draw out the curses and prayers alike from the other vampire. He let himself focus on everything, on the feel of skin on skin, of the heat of Ronan inside of him. Adam wanted to commit it to a memory so deep he would never forget the feeling. He was fierce and independent and the master of himself if nothing else, but sometimes he wanted to drown in this feeling, to drown in _Ronan_ , just for a little while. 

And Ronan let him. He moved his other hand from Adam’s thigh to grip Adam’s erection instead, pumping it slow but hard in time with the way Adam moved on top of him. Precome was pooling on Ronan’s belly, white on white, and it didn’t matter at all that they’d already fucked first thing that evening. He needed it - they _both_ needed it. 

Adam still tried to stretch it out as long as he could, to pause and just relax and try to calm down when they got too close to the edge before moving again. He wasn’t sure he’d ever stop being hungry for Ronan, for this, not in ten years, not in thirty, not in however long they had. 

Forever. They had forever, if they wanted it. 

Ronan’s grip on Adam’s cock tightened, his strokes becoming more desperate, more frantic as he bucked his hips up again. Of course, Ronan would get off on the thought of forever, wouldn’t he? 

Adam couldn’t blame him. The possibility _was_ intoxicating. 

Ronan came with a curse that was positively foul, earning a smitten laugh from Adam which in turn pulled a groan from Ronan’s throat. Adam’s laugh was something he lived for. He squeezed Adam’s hand again, and his pace not slowed from his own orgasm he pulled one from Adam shortly after. 

Sated in every way he could be, Adam laid back on his side in the grass against Ronan, fingertips tracing the line of Ronan’s jaw while Ronan did the same to him. He felt weightless, perfectly relaxed, and some of Ronan’s dizziness was transferred across to him as well. 

“ _You_ need to eat,” it was Adam’s turn to chide. 

“Mmm,” Ronan replied, closing his eyes instead and turning his head just so, so that he could catch Adam’s fingertips against his lips. Ronan let his tongue dart out just enough to draw Adam’s fingers in, to suck on them just barely. Adam felt the warmth spread through him again. 

He pulled his hand away, Ronan opening his eyes to give Adam a faintly annoyed glare. Like a toddler who had a toy taken away. 

The glare got stronger at that comparison, on that note. Adam smiled. If Ronan had a heartbeat it would have skipped to see it.

“No more until you eat,” Adam said softly. Though he was good at keeping his voice even, he couldn’t hide the ripple of concern there. Ronan _sighed_ , the sigh of the greatly put upon, and pushed himself up on his elbows to fix his jeans and stand.

“Wait here for me, I’ll be right back.” 

Even not going with Ronan, Adam closed his eyes and opened his senses to their connection. To see and feel the hunt even while he laid back in the field, listening as the night birds fell silent and the morning sparrows began to chirp in the darkness. The exhaustion of the day began to set in as his mind drifted. He was thinking that he had it wrong, actually. Ronan did not hunt exactly the same as some dangerous predator, but with the careful efficiency and care of a farmer, having the same trust from his herd even as he needed to eat them sometimes. 

That realization warmed Adam too, in a different way. It was like the callous Ronan he’d first been introduced to with Gansey was… not a completely different person entirely, he was still callous, he was still short-tempered, he was still vicious and temperamental and a hundred other awful things, but there was so much more than that as well. Adam still wasn’t certain he understood the Ronan that Gansey insisted still existed, the one who was around before Niall Lynch had been killed. Adam had never met that one, and he didn’t think he ever would. 

He liked this Ronan just fine, though. 

Adam rolled from his side onto his back as Ronan approached again, sleepily pulling his own clothing back on. The sky was beginning to change from the almost black of night to the hazy navy blue of pre-dawn light. He still had his watch on - he hadn’t taken it off since Gansey had given it to him, just in case, but he did worry that he would fall asleep in the car like this. It was still a twenty minute drive back to Henrietta, and with morning traffic to battle with they were less likely to be able to make the same speed they had before. 

“Come on - we’ll just stay here today, head back at sundown,” Ronan offered, holding his hand out to help Adam up. 

Even tired as he was, every touch felt electric. Ronan’s skin was warmed from a fresh kill. 

“I thought you said we weren’t supposed to be here. What if someone comes?” 

“No one comes during the daytime,” Ronan said with a faint scoff, then as that didn’t entirely dismiss Adam’s concern, “I’ll move the car behind one of the barns and my bedroom has a lock. No one will even know we’re here.” 

Adam severely doubted that, but he also couldn’t help stifle a spark of curiosity at the chance to look inside the farmhouse, to see the place in person that he’d caught glimpses of in Ronan’s memory. 

Ronan’s smile was like the edge of a knife, but it was always that way. 

Adam waited at the edge of the field while Ronan moved his car, helped him kick the gravel to cover the tire marks, then followed him inside.

* * *

The inside of the Lynch family home was so remarkably similar to 300 Fox Way, not that Ronan liked the comparison. Every surface was bursting with color, with texture, with more things to draw the eye and ear and smells to catch. He couldn’t imagine waking up here when you were still learning heightened senses. Everything begged for a chance to drive you to distraction. 

Ronan held Adam’s hand while he lead Adam through the kitchen and into the hallway, assuring Adam silently that it was different if you were raised into it. Adam caught glimpses of it then - snippets of happy childhood memories, of his parents, of the fully grown brother Declan, of Matthew just a few years younger than Ronan as they both grew and played all with the knowledge and gentle training for what they would need when the time came. Of the thrill of being allowed to go hunting with his father when he was twelve, of being so good at it that when the time came for him to feed on his own he needed absolutely no help at all. 

It was difficult to compare that Ronan with this one. So much had changed for him. In the hallway to their left was the stairway up to the bedrooms, to the right it lead to the sitting room. Adam could see the light peeking out from under the doorway there. 

Ronan was silent, holding Adam’s hand in the gentle dark and quiet of the hallway. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. 

“... Do you want to meet my mom?”

* * *

Looking down at Aurora Lynch, Adam’s first thought was Sleeping Beauty. Specifically, the Disney cartoon, though doing the math in his head quickly she had to be much older than that. She was still youthful, but not so much so that it was inconceivable that she could have young adult children of her own.

The furniture of the sitting room had been moved around to accommodate a bed, the kind of plush and comfortable thing that one would want to spend days in if they could, the queen size taking up much of the room’s available space. In the bed, Aurora Lynch lay sleeping, her blonde hair like spun gold draped across the lace-trimmed pillow.

All the curtains in the room were drawn, although a small table lamp let off just enough light to see around the room by. A comfortable chair was by her bedside, though it looked as though no one had sat in it for some time. 

“How long has she been like this?” Adam asked quietly, looking up from Aurora to her son, Ronan. He was unable to look away from his mother, memories of her so alive and full of light and love dancing across his mind. 

“Since dad died,” Ronan said, equally quiet, though there was no risk in waking her. She slept on, peacefully. 

“And she doesn’t … feeding isn’t a problem?” Adam had to ask. Sure, Ronan and Gansey could go days without eating, but Niall Lynch had been dead for three years now. 

It was complicated, and Ronan didn’t have the words to explain. Different explanations flitted through his mind, that she wasn’t exactly human, wasn’t exactly a vampire - _I thought you said half-vampires weren’t real?_ \- _Not **that** -_-

Ronan’s grip on Adam’s hand tightened just slightly. Fear began to bleed through his consciousness. Fear so quickly turned to anger with Ronan, Adam squeezed his hand in return. Resolve strengthening, Ronan nodded towards the hallway, towards the stairs up to the bedrooms. 

“... I think it’s better if I show you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the late in the day posting for this! I decided on Wednesday that I hated absolutely everything I had written for this chapter so far so I kinda rewrote all of it... /cough


	4. Ronan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan tells Adam one of the many secrets he's been keeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooooo this was super delayed! I'm so sorry everyone who was reading - I had some sudden health issues that put me back significantly, and while I'm on the upswing and dealing with them it's probably going to make this move like molasses. On the BRIGHT SIDE I think I've only got about 2 or 3 chapters after this left? We'll say 3, though the last will probably be a small little epilogue. So we're not far off! Thank you for sticking with me this far!

Ronan knew there was a time before he lived with Niall and Aurora Lynch, but he held no memory of it himself. He was just barely learning to talk when they took him in. As far as Ronan Lynch was concerned, his life had always been at the Barns, he had always had Aurora and Niall as parents. 

The thing was, while Ronan had no memories of his own, he DID have faint memories of his father’s. They’d already had Declan and traditionally the Lynches took only one successfully turned child per generation. Oh, sure, they boasted a complete success rate among the changed for survival, but that was because they had time to watch and learn those they chose. Almost twenty years was enough time to learn if someone wouldn’t be able to cope, or for them to decide they didn’t want that future. That option was always open - mortal family had its own usefulness. Especially in the days before a society built on 24-hour access. So while Niall and Aurora weren’t _really_ looking for another child, Aurora loved babies, and there was no harm in just the looking. 

It was the flowers that caught Niall’s eye. Beautiful blue, shaped like tiny stars, aglow with their own inner light. Nothing that existed in this world.

“Where did you get those?” He had asked the small Ronan, curious and friendly. Ronan had just enough vocabulary to express that he’d gotten them from his dreams. 

He was one of many war orphans of the time, conveniently for Niall, and by the end of the day he was Ronan Niall Lynch, and Niall’s favorite son.

* * *

The sun was slowly but surely coming up, and while the room had light curtains already covering the window they did little to keep the majority of the light out. Ronan left Adam to get his shoes off and get mostly undressed while Ronan found the darker, thicker curtains and hung them over the few windows in his room to drop them into a more comforting darkness. Only once that had been completed did he turn back to look at the other boy. To let himself admire how it looked to have Adam on his childhood bed, dressed only in his threadbare t-shirt and boxers. The bed was big enough for the both of them, if only barely. They’d have to cuddle. 

Adam raised a curious eyebrow. He could sense Ronan’s nervousness, but he did his best to not follow that thread, to give Ronan what privacy he could. His own fatigue was great, but he was struggling for wakefulness for Ronan. 

“Get comfortable,” Ronan said with a sigh. His father had impressed in him that this was not a secret to share, not with anyone, and so Ronan simply hadn’t. Not with anyone who wasn’t a Lynch, not even with Gansey. 

But Adam was kind of a Lynch now, and Adam deserved to know, and Ronan trusted Adam. Of course, trusting Adam was never in question. When it came to his secrets, it was a always matter of trusting himself. 

As Adam pulled back the bed sheets and curled up under the comforter, Ronan kicked off his boots and stripped off his clothing until he had nothing on, squeezing into the bed and spooning against Adam’s back, arms tight around the other boy. Silent reassurances, a request again for Adam to trust him, and Ronan for the first time did what he had been avoiding these last two weeks. He slept at the same time as Adam.

* * *

Ronan had his suspicions but no proof this would work. Yet when he opened his eyes to the branches of the forest overhead, the hood of his Chevy Bel Air under his back, Ronan _knew_ Adam was there too. He rolled off the hood and let his feet hit the asphalt. He was ‘alive’, mostly. He looked like he did back when he was alive. He reached into his mouth and felt along his flat and perfectly human teeth. It happened sometimes, when he was feeling nostalgic before he slept. He hadn’t been able to tell if there was a correlation between an ability to pull things from his dreams and whether he was a vampire or a human in them. The ground was a patchwork of asphalt and grass, the Chevy parked on one of the only solid sections of concrete. Faint and faded white and yellow paint was here and there barely visible under the wheels.   
From the tree line there was movement, and Ronan first thought it might be Orphan Girl, but no.

The question was whether it was the real Adam, or the Adam that Ronan saw in his dreams all the time. He held cautiously still, waiting to see how Adam would react. Warmth, or coldness? The Adam of his dreams had always been unwilling to speak with him, disinterested in whatever Ronan had to offer, impossible to impress. 

This one smiled, and Ronan could feel the dreamy relaxation of the real Adam. He was barefoot, but otherwise dressed normally. Where he stepped, flowers grew. The same bright blue little stars. Behind Ronan, the Chevy shifted to a Pontiac GTO. 

“Totaled too?” Adam asked as he approached, reaching out to touch the chrome edges of it, fingertips tracing the window. Ronan could swear he felt the touch of Adam’s fingers against his skin. 

“Yeah,” Ronan said quietly, though his voice was rough. “It lit on fire, actually. Pretty dramatic.” 

As Adam stood next to the Pontiac, the asphalt began to split and crack, hairline fractures that allowed the grass and flowers and vines to creep up, to climb the tires. The flowers were the same color as Adam’s eyes. 

“This is a dream, isn’t it?” Adam asked, as if he just realized. He looked at the car, at the trees, then finally at Ronan. Unafraid, he reached out to run a hand through Ronan’s dark, curly hair. 

“It is,” Ronan said agreeably, tilting his head against Adam’s hand to allow Adam to touch whatever he wanted. He prefered his head shaved for many reasons, but there was something darkly pleasurable about feeling Adam’s fingers threading through his hair.

“You didn’t bring me here just to show off all the classic cars you totaled, did you?” 

The car shifted again, a Chevrolet once more but a Vega instead of a Bel Air. 

“I didn’t,” Ronan admitted, though he still thought that would be a pretty impressive seduction technique. Adam gave Ronan a withering look without any actual anger to it. No, Ronan, he was already seduced, showing off your toys if anything made him rethink that. 

Ronan grinned. Adam had never called himself ‘seduced’ before. 

He backed Adam against the car and Adam went easily, letting both his hands find Ronan’s hair as their lips found each other. Ronan’s heart beat wildly in his chest. Ronan didn’t occupy himself with what-ifs, it wasn’t in his nature to wonder about a life he could have lead. Besides, whatever shitty things he had to deal with had lead him to Adam Parrish here, with him. 

Feeling absolutely electric, Adam between him and one of his many vehicles for speed and freedom, Ronan felt like he could do anything. 

“I can take things from my dreams,” he confessed. He felt too powerful here, with Adam with him. His self-loathing was a distant thing, surely safe for tonight if nothing else. 

Adam’s look that he gave Ronan at that didn’t _quite_ say ‘bullshit’, but there was healthy skepticism there. Ronan was offended, even knowing that the skepticism was as second nature to Adam as Ronan’s faith. 

“Really?” Ronan scoffed, leaning in to nip at Adam’s neck, his ear, to drag blunt teeth against his jaw. “After vampires and ghosts and magic fucking forests - _this_ is what makes you think I’m bullshitting you?”

“I don’t think you’re _bullshitting_ me,” Adam protested, letting his hands fall to Ronan’s shoulders, to touch and feel the leather of his jacket when it was still new, not around half a century old. He breathed softly and easily, tilting his neck back so Ronan could make the effort to kiss and bite and suck a mark into it, because this was a dream and if Ronan willed it, it would be. “It’s just that… vampires, ghosts, ‘magic fucking forests’, they aren’t very different. Folklore that exists across generations and cultures. ‘Taking things from dreams’ is less common folklore and more… I don’t know, Tor or Harper Collins.” 

“Here I thought you were going to say DC or Marvel,” Ronan grinned. Adam matched the expression. 

“You look more like ‘modern’ fantasy novel character from a book written in the early 80’s than a superhero, but does this mean you’re offering to wear spandex?” 

Ronan laughed, a joyous caw of sound, pressing his face against Adam’s shoulder and wrapping his arms around his waist to pull him close. Ronan had handfuls of flowers, of vines, from growing on the Chevy behind them, from the way they crawled onto Adam as well, desperate to be close to him. Ronan could empathize. 

“Wake up,” Ronan whispered to Adam. “I want to show you something beautiful.”

* * *

It was difficult for Adam to wake during the day, but Ronan had faith in Adam’s stubborn determination. For his part, he awoke briefly paralyzed like he always did, but for once no fear or anxiety came with it. Adam was a warm body against his side, pressed close and comfortable. In the time they’d been asleep he’d shifted around and now had an arm sprawled across Ronan’s chest, his hand draped so casually across Ronan’s flank, fingertips brushing against Ronan’s ribs. 

The subtle sweetness of the scent of flowers hit him as Adam began to stir, groggy, still tired, every part of his nature demanding he fall back asleep. The bright light of day peeked out through a crack in the curtains, signaling a sunny and cloudless sky. The perfect day on the cusp of summer. 

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Adam looked beautiful when he slept. The tension present on him in wakefulness was all gone, and Ronan thought that if in the eternity they now had he could bring that peace and relaxation to him in full wakefulness his whole shitty life could be made worth it. 

He came back into himself as Adam started pulling himself fully from sleep, blinking slowly as he tried to focus on Ronan’s gaze. 

The whole bed was littered with blossoms, with leaves. In Ronan’s hands, in Adam’s hair, crushed under them and between them. Adam’s brow furrowed slightly, pale eyebrows drawing together. 

“... Are we still dreaming?” he asked quietly.

“Nah,” Ronan said, smiling. “I could pinch you to be sure, though.”

* * *

Dreams were no place to hold up a conversation, and Adam was unable to stay awake while the sun was in the sky. He drifted in and out of sleep, brief wakefulness, and deeper sleep still. Sometimes he was conscious enough in dreams to ask Ronan questions, but forgot as soon as he fell into deeper sleep. The first time that happened, Ronan shifted the car back into the Chevy Bel Air and popped the trunk. It contained half-remembered items from a lifetime away, out of date textbooks, an extra shirt that was in style when Eisenhower was president. A Kennedy button. What Ronan was looking for in particular, a composition notebook and a stray pencil. He took both out to hand to Adam. 

“Just write a question down if you have one and pass it to me. I can answer them when you’re awake. Save us both some time.” 

Adam flipped the notebook open and paged through it, eyebrows raising into his hairline. Ronan had not considered checking if it was blank before handing it over. 

It had not been, apparently. Through Adam’s eyes he got to read some of the more detailed fantasies he’d had about Adam in Latin class over the course of their friendship. Adam quickly tucked the notebook behind him before Ronan could snatch it back. 

“And here I always thought you were making fun of me for not being as good as you at it,” Adam said with no small amount of mirth, a mischievous smile on his face. Even when Ronan had disliked Adam as the newest member of Gansey’s inner circle, he had always found the other boy attractive. 

Even before Gansey had become friends with Adam, Ronan had taken notice of him in class. Had wanted him in ways that were distinctly unchristian. 

Instead of taking the notebook back, Ronan dropped his hands to Adam’s hips and pulled him closer to kiss him again. 

It was one of the best days of sleep that Ronan had in longer than he could remember. He was always cautious for the dark things at the edge of his perception, but they stayed their claws and beaks for one day at least. He would need to explain their danger to Adam eventually, but that could wait until Adam was at least able to remember it. One thing at a time. Adam drifted in and out of deeper sleep while Ronan drifted in and out of wakefulness. When he was awake, he got to lay in bed with his arms around Adam and watch his sleeping face. Ronan’s heart ached to return to his home permanently, to bring Adam with him and have this every day. 

He knew Adam wanted to leave - Henrietta in particular, as far away as he could get, and Ronan didn’t begrudge him for it. You didn’t hate the birds for migrating away during winter, you could only hold them in your memory and wait for spring to bring them back again. His own heart was in Virginia, his bones made from the soil of the land and his very soul from the mountains and fields and God willing he would never leave it. Being twenty minutes drive away was bad enough. 

Adam didn’t wake in a frenzy like he had the night before, but then again Ronan hadn’t opened a vein to wake him up either. He just kissed along Adam’s neck and shoulders and jaw line and held him close until Adam groggily awoke with the setting of the sun. He let out a breathless laugh when Ronan bumped his hips back against Adam’s - pressing his erection against Adam’s ass, Adam’s boxers the only thing between them. 

“Do you even have any lube left?” Adam asked softly, hunger for blood battling with his hunger for flesh as Ronan let a hand slide from around Adam’s waist into his boxers to palm his cock awake. The laughter turned into a soft moan. 

“If I do it’s all the way in my jacket,” Ronan groused. The jacket was tossed carelessly over the back of the chair, well out of reach of his arm, which was about as far as he was willing to reach. He’d clearly have shelve fucking Adam into the mattress of his childhood bed for another day. Good thing there was plenty they could do that didn’t involve that. 

Ronan grinned, nipped softly at Adam’s neck, then ducked under the covers. Adam barely had time to gasp out an “Oh!” before Ronan was between his spread thighs, yanking his boxers down to take Adam into his mouth. It was a little tricky, to keep his fangs behind his lips, but in that regard Ronan was a quick study. Adam laughed again, hands going down to steady against Ronan’s shoulders, to touch the back of his head - of course _this_ Ronan dedicated study time to. It was different than slacking off in class, though. This he actually cared about. 

Adam was so warm in his mouth, cock quickly thickening as Ronan sucked on it. He varied up his pace to keep Adam unable to predict it even with the shared connection, swallowing him down as deep as he could before pulling back again to lick every inch that he couldn’t fit down his throat. Adam hadn’t been as ready to go as Ronan first thing, but neither of them ever lasted terribly long right after waking. 

Still, there had been something Ronan wanted to try. 

He didn’t give Adam time to notice what he was planning, did little planning aside from letting the idea cross his mind before he shifted his grip on Adam’s thighs to be _under_ one, pushing it up against Adam’s chest and twisting the blankets in the process before he was ducking his head down again to lick at Adam’s hole. 

“What are- _oh!_ ”

Surprise, the faintest trace of concern quickly overridden by pleasure all bled through Adam’s mind as Ronan’s tongue stroked against his skin before squirming inside of him. Adam turned his head to press his mouth against the pillow, and while that did stifle the sounds that were escaping in spite of his best efforts, Ronan never thought of Adam as quiet anymore. He might not make noise, but his thoughts were never still, and they had become a riot of desire. Ronan wanted to reach his hand down between his legs just to get some kind of friction going, he was going to die just from feeling Adam’s need. He ignored his own cock in favor of paying attention to Adam’s again, pulling back just enough to slick up his own fingers with his tongue to get a better angle inside of him, mouth returning to Adam’s cock while he fingered Adam to completion. He knew Adam’s body inside and out now, and it took no time at all to find the spot inside Adam that had him begging for Ronan. There was little better than feeling Adam come apart around him, the little hiccupping gasps he let out when he was actively trying to be quiet. 

When Adam came, he swallowed, sucking on his softening cock until there was nothing left, until Adam’s little pleasured whimpers started to edge on the oversensitivity of pain. 

From between Adam’s legs, Ronan smirked up at him as he watched Adam raise himself onto his elbows. His hole was twitching, needy and slick from Ronan’s tongue, and even oversensitive right after his orgasm, Ronan could feel how badly Adam wanted Ronan’s cock inside of him. 

So, rimming made Adam _really_ ready for dick. That was good to know. 

Adam scoffed, reaching down to grab Ronan’s arm to tug him upward, to kiss at Ronan’s neck. His lust mostly sated, there was another hunger taking its place. Adam rolled them over so Ronan was sprawled on his back on the bed and Adam was sitting across his thighs. 

It was easy, as Ronan had stripped entirely before going to bed. Adam leaned in to nuzzle against Ronan’s neck, licking gently at the pale skin of his throat as his hands slid down Ronan’s stomach to grasp at his cock. Ronan had been all worked up by the time he started sucking Adam off, so he was already fully hard in Adam’s calloused hands. 

When Adam bit down on his neck and began to suck, it took every bit of self control for Ronan to not come right then and there. 

Adam wasn’t exactly made of muscle, he weighed comparatively little against Ronan even though they were similar in height. It was still enough to keep him pinned to the mattress, to keep him in place as Adam gently stroked and teased at Ronan’s erection, fingertips giving barely there pressure that had to be considered torture in several places. Just when Ronan thought he was close, about to burst, Adam pulled back from both his neck and his dick.

Blue eyes dark, mouth rimmed with red, Ronan thought Adam never looked sexier. Later on he’d be able to appreciate Adam gaining a quick control of himself, of his hunger, being able to pull back like that. Right then, Ronan cursed it until Adam took pity on him and ducked down again.

Ronan was right though, having his blood sucked had no impact on his ability to orgasm. If anything, it made it happen sooner. 

They laid in bed briefly, curled up against one another. Ronan kept nuzzling against Adam’s neck, and even knowing they needed to leave soon to make it back to Henrietta didn’t seem like the proper amount of urgency. 

The sound of tires on gravel changed that. 

Adam heard them at the same time, and they both sat up in the bed, alarmed. Yes, tires on gravel, approaching the farmhouse. Ronan slid out of bed and went to the window, pulling back the curtain just enough to catch a glimpse of Declan’s car. He was suddenly _terribly_ relieved that Adam had talked him into hiding the BMW behind one of the barns after all, and hoped desperately that Declan would not find it or them. 

Under other circumstances he would have just confronted his brother and it would have ended in a fistfight, but right there, right then - well, Ronan didn’t even have pants on… and he didn’t want to get Adam in more trouble by association. 

Silently he returned to the bed, making a shushing motion as he sat down next to Adam. Neither breathed nor spoke, they needed neither. In the silence Adam asked Ronan how long Declan was normally here for, but Ronan honestly didn’t know. It wasn’t like their mother needed any real care. 

The slam of Declan’s car door sounded like a gunshot, although his steps were only barely audible on the wood of the floor as he walked through the farmhouse. The two upstairs could track his movements, still and patient. Through the kitchen, into the sitting room where he stood for a while. Each minute was an eternity before Declan moved along. Towards the staircase. Adam’s hand went out to grip Ronan’s arm and hold it tight enough that bruises formed and healed instantly, but Ronan did not make a sound. Concern kept rolling through Adam’s consciousness, plans for how to act should they be discovered flashing by too quickly for Ronan to understand or track, every possible need accounted for. 

Declan’s steps moved passed the stairway, through the hall, out the back door. 

Ronan swallowed, barely.

All in all Declan was there for less than fifteen minutes, though it felt like so much longer as they waited for him to move, to leave. He paused only once, back in the driveway, Ronan once more sneaking a glance out the window to see Declan stop right by his car and stare off towards the barn Ronan had the BMW parked behind. Facing away, Declan’s expression was unreadable. 

He opened the door of his car and got in, driving away. 

“Thank _fuck_ ,” Ronan hissed, quickly grabbing for his clothing. He’d remained undressed the whole time, not wanting to step on one of the more creaking floorboards and give them away. 

“We need to wait before we leave. Just in case. Give it like … ten minutes, at least,” Adam warned. Ronan wanted to think he was being paranoid, but that paranoia had already saved Ronan’s hide once so he figured he owed Adam that. 

Once they dressed they went back downstairs, diverting into the sitting room before they left so Ronan could say goodbye to his mother. He had told Adam, in the quiet of dreams, about her. About what Ronan knew, anyway. A vampire yes, but like none that existed in the world. A queen from another land far away from here, seen only in dreams, brought to this world by Niall Lynch the love of her life. Without him, this was what she was, sleeping eternally. It was the fate of all dream creations that were alive, when the dreamer died. Her true love was gone, there was no one to kiss her awake anymore. 

Ronan reached out to squeeze his mother’s hand, gently, murmuring a ‘Bye, Mom’. Adam noticed the chair had been moved just a bit and wondered if Declan had done the same. 

As the last of the sunlight faded from the sky above Singer Falls, the two were back on the road to Henrietta once more, hopefully to find some answers about the whispers in the trees of Cabeswater, and what they meant to Adam in particular. 

Neither were sure of what they were going to do with an answer. Neither were sure of what they could do without one. 

At least they had each other, no matter what came.


End file.
